Downplaying God’s Wrath

There are aspects of God’s nature that make people uncomfortable. God’s wrath is one of them. In fact, fewer and fewer churches nowadays will openly preach about the wrath of God. The topic is taboo to our modern sensibilities. While some ignore the biblical teaching of God’s wrath, others flat out deny it.

In a recent post from The Gospel Coalition, Gavin Ortlund offers four problems with downplaying God’s wrath. Of the four problems the author cites, the first seems to be the weightiest. He writes,

If we want to move away from the notion of an angry God while retaining an authoritative Bible, we have some pretty heavy revisionist lifting to do. I would say the effort is roughly comparable to Thomas Jefferson’s attempt to scissor-cut the supernatural out of the Bible. Just type in “Lord wrath” or “God angry” to a Bible Gateway search. There are more than 600 references to divine wrath in Scripture.